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Yea, they basically just sort of stay on an even keel through the series. It's still hooked me well enough to wonder exactly who the devil is, and what the next miracles were. I was cracking the gently caress up in the last book when Chris started shaking her and yelling "JERKING OFF ISN'T A SIN, YOU SAID IT WASN'T A SIN, TELL ME IT'S NOT A SIN". That was an amazing mental image. That and the line "I think I exorcised an orgasm out of him". The best way I can think to describe em is a diary that's entertaining to read. Yea, she's probably never going to die, and no one is really going to get killed permanently, it's just not that dark of a series. It's a fairly unique view from a female perspective though, and I've enjoyed em. I am just glad they are on KU. Oh yea, speaking of KU, Glass Predator came out yesterday, and drat it's good. I'm really enjoying how the series takes place in the same universe/world as the Faust series, but the thematic feel of each is completely different. Faust has demons, and weird occult poo poo, and some grinning creepy fucker and a con he's gotta get done right. Harmony has a giant screaming naked space guy, more personal demons, and more witchy/SCP kinda things to deal with. Same universe, same writer, completely different feel to the books. Schaefer is one talented dude.
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Mar 29, 2017 10:24
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So I just finished The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin and they were amazing. How good are the sequels in the respective series? Especially The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, where the sequel should have some plot issues given the ending of the first book.
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Mar 29, 2017 12:15
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Cardiac posted:So I just finished The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin and they were amazing. Do not, do not read the sequel to Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It initially seems like it's fun, but at the end the characters from the first book prance in to make sure everyone's unhappy and miserable forever, because screw you, and screw you the reader especially for wanting something remotely satisfying. It was so bad I swore off of reading her forever after that because I was so angered by it. 
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Mar 29, 2017 12:48
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^^^ I liked it and the third.  The series is named after events in the third, the first two are just background stories and world building to get you there from a certain perspective. Cardiac posted:So I just finished The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin and they were amazing. The HTK does a small time jump and reset of the world to the next book, the human cast completely (?) changes every book, the focus on gods (and which gods) is also different, although they all reappear to varying degrees from the first book. Plus new ones. Number Ten Cocks fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 12:56
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The sequel to HTK is not as dreary, but compensates in being more banal.
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 13:59
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Megazver posted:Oh yeah, it's like one half - or perhaps one third - of the story. Scalzi hasn't really kept it a secret that this is the first part of a series. That said, there's a way to wrap up the first part of a series in a satisfactory way and still hook people for the followup(s). Having not read The Collapsing Empire yet, I can't comment on whether or not Scalzi accomplishes this.
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Mar 29, 2017 14:17
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Cardiac posted:So I just finished The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin and they were amazing. The Obelisk Gate is really good.
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Mar 29, 2017 15:06
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StrixNebulosa posted:Do not, do not read the sequel to Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It initially seems like it's fun, but at the end the characters from the first book prance in to make sure everyone's unhappy and miserable forever, because screw you, and screw you the reader especially for wanting something remotely satisfying. I thought the HTK sequels were fine. I haven't read the novella that's in the collected edition because I don't want to re-buy the whole thing (or track it down somewhere else).
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Mar 29, 2017 15:51
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The sequel to HTK is not as dreary, but compensates in being more banal. How many times per week do you estimate you use the word banal? The word's very spirit seems to have infected you.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:36
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Cardiac posted:So I just finished The Fifth Season and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Jemisin and they were amazing. I liked the sequels to HTK but this is not a trilogy where the evil are justly punished and everyone is happy forever--it's a serious attempt at trying to find reconciliation after conflict. Obelisk Gate was solid, it didn't have the groundbreaking newness of Fifth Season but I was entertained by it, and by what we learned about important characters through it. It also set up the central plot but we knew what that was from the first. I am really hoping she sticks the landing good.
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Mar 29, 2017 20:46
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A couple of sci-fi related book bundles are available now: Story Bundle: The A.I. Bundle Min. $5 Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams Arachne by Lisa Mason The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan Rewired - The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel Min. $15 The A.I. Chronicles by Samuel Peralta and Ellen Campbell Eye Candy by Ryan Schneider Cyberweb by Lisa Mason Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon I've only read Aristoi, but I remember it to be pretty OK, back in the day. Humble Book Bundle: The Horus Heresy A shitload of Warhammer 40K books, a couple of audiobooks and some other stuff in the usual Humble tiers. I have absolutely no idea if these books are worth reading, but I do remember someone from the old SF Signal blog reviewing some of the W40K books with great enthusiasm.
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Mar 29, 2017 21:50
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Megazver posted:Read Scalzi's newest, The Collapsing Empire. It's typical Scalzi - funny, breezy read, mostly dialogue. I did see him wonder on his blog about why people keep telling him that the book seems shorter than his other ones, even though it's the similar length, 100k-ish, as mandated by his contract, as his other books. I'm reading it now (about 40% through). It's interesting that I'm not sure who to root for (if I should at all).
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Mar 29, 2017 23:24
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The entire Craft sequence seems to be on sale for Kindle as an omnibus. It's under Ł7 in the UK and about $8 in the US. Great value.
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Mar 29, 2017 23:30
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ClydeFrog posted:The entire Craft sequence seems to be on sale for Kindle as an omnibus. It's under Ł7 in the UK and about $8 in the US. Great value. Endorse. Naturally this happens right after I finish the most recent book.
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Mar 29, 2017 23:34
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ClydeFrog posted:The entire Craft sequence seems to be on sale for Kindle as an omnibus. It's under Ł7 in the UK and about $8 in the US. Great value. I'm only seeing it for $12. The individual books are on sale for $3 and I was only missing 3 of them so I got those for $9.
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Mar 29, 2017 23:37
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And you can preorder book 6 on Google Play for... $2.99? Is that right? Anyway, I'm currently hitting a rut on reading Last First Snow, which I'm not liking nearly as much as the previous three. Maybe I should take a break instead of trying to read the entire series too quickly.
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Mar 30, 2017 03:10
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It picks up in the second half.
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Mar 30, 2017 03:11
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Rand Brittain posted:And you can preorder book 6 on Google Play for... $2.99? Is that right? I didn't like it myself, part of that is it being a prequel and there being no surprises I felt. Two Serpents Rise also didnt do much for me until near the end, but I really liked the first and third and have Four Roads Cross to read. ihop posted:One of the amazon reviews I read complained about a lack of major resolution in this book, as though maybe it was a setup book for a subsequent series. Did you feel this was the case? This is what annoyed me about Jemesin's Fifth Season; I enjoyed it, and will pick up Obelisk Gate, but I didn't find the ending that satisfying. I'm getting more and more reluctant to pick up any sf/f series that's not completely released. At least it's not going to be a long wait for the last one to release later this year.
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Mar 30, 2017 03:35
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Well I finally got around to finishing the first Mistborn series last week and while I did feel that the infodumps verged on the Weberesque at times, it was enjoyable enough. Dunno if I'll continue with the second series right now, maybe once it's finished.
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Mar 30, 2017 04:11
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C.M. Kruger posted:Well I finally got around to finishing the first Mistborn series last week and while I did feel that the infodumps verged on the Weberesque at times, it was enjoyable enough. Dunno if I'll continue with the second series right now, maybe once it's finished. I red the Mistborn trilogy a while back and really liked it, then a few years later (about a year ago) I tried to read his new series with the cowboy mistborn people and thought it was utter poo poo - I put it down completely about 100 pages in.
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Mar 30, 2017 04:59
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fritz posted:I thought the HTK sequels were fine. I haven't read the novella that's in the collected edition because I don't want to re-buy the whole thing (or track it down somewhere else). I've only read the first sequel, not the other. A more spoilery take on why I hate it so much: (spoils the end of the first sequel) The main plot is fine. The last set of scenes is not, because I did not endure a whole book of adventure (complete with an upsetting cult indoctrination sequence that made me sick to my stomach, even if she definitely wasn't falling for it) for her friends to be dead or otherwise out of reach, and her 'prize', this new not-very-good love interest, to be summarily taken away because screw you, reader, screw you, heroine, you get to live in a new place alone and pregnant and sad and with your loves out of reach forever. It just felt like I'd gone and gotten invested only for the author to turn and kick me in the gut and prance off with the characters from the first book, who are clearly the better characters and we need to get back to loving them more than this new one. In short, you might not have this problem, but it really upset me and I no longer trust the author enough to get invested in anything else she writes - which is a huge bummer! Her writing is fun to read, and I like her world-building! I just - I just -  (I have a similar problem with Diane Duane, who loves to kill off a character by the end of every book, because damnit, you can't have a happy ending without a sacrifice somewhere in there. With no exceptions! Not for YA, not for Star Trek, not for anything she's ever written.)
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Mar 30, 2017 07:05
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occamsnailfile posted:I liked the sequels to HTK but this is not a trilogy where the evil are justly punished and everyone is happy forever--it's a serious attempt at trying to find reconciliation after conflict. Obelisk Gate was solid, it didn't have the groundbreaking newness of Fifth Season but I was entertained by it, and by what we learned about important characters through it. It also set up the central plot but we knew what that was from the first. I am really hoping she sticks the landing good. The sequels to HTK sounds pretty good then. I didn't consider Fifth Season to be groundbreakingly new for the genre, but the writing was great. The complexity of the storytelling is pretty great if one, like me, enjoyed Malazan. The books also had a nice flow in them which is something I appreciate. The way she avoided many fantasy cliches was pretty refreshing as well. Guess I have a new author to binge-read.
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Mar 30, 2017 07:27
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Fart of Presto posted:A couple of sci-fi related book bundles are available now: I really love Aristoi. It's one of my favorite books, possibly ever. It broke my heart in a wonderful way. Linda Nagata's old stuff on that list is okay but her craft has really drastically improved since then and her mil-SF series 'The Red' is excellent.
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Mar 30, 2017 08:35
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New Jeff VandereMeer and Mark Lawerence - any one read them?
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Mar 30, 2017 10:12
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I read vanderemeers trilogy about a haunted lighthouse and the first book was good and crap thereafter.
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Mar 30, 2017 10:23
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Baloogan posted:I read vanderemeers trilogy about a haunted lighthouse and the first book was good and crap thereafter. Agreed, though it has its fans. His Ambergris books are better.
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Mar 30, 2017 13:15
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Anansi Boys, which is in the American Gods setting but not really much like it, and Anathem, which is Neal Stephenson's finest work and super good, for two bucks each on Kindle store.
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Mar 30, 2017 13:50
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Neurosis posted:New Jeff VandereMeer and Mark Lawerence - any one read them? They're not actually out until next week, so probably not.
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Mar 30, 2017 14:03
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Neurosis posted:Agreed, though it has its fans. His Ambergris books are better.
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Mar 30, 2017 14:13
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Drifter posted:I red the Mistborn trilogy a while back and really liked it, then a few years later (about a year ago) I tried to read his new series with the cowboy mistborn people and thought it was utter poo poo - I put it down completely about 100 pages in. I did this too, then a few years later I picked it up again and thought it was fantastic and way better than the original trilogy. I'm willing to bet you stopped right around the same point I did.
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Mar 30, 2017 15:22
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Speaking of Stephenson, his new book The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. coauthored with Nicole Galland is out on June 13th. Any comments on what it is and how good this might be?
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Mar 30, 2017 16:55
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ringu0 posted:Speaking of Stephenson, his new book The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. coauthored with Nicole Galland is out on June 13th. Any comments on what it is and how good this might be? Hopefully he let Galland write the ending.
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Mar 30, 2017 17:02
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Baloogan posted:I read vanderemeers trilogy about a haunted lighthouse and the first book was good and crap thereafter. Oh god yes. I enjoyed the first book, slogged through the second and could not get into the third. I swear, I'll try and get through Acceptance one of these days. I absolutely adore the Ambergris books, though. Maybe cause each book is its own thing, that both carries forward the plot and tells its own story in a unique fashion? City of Saints and Madmen was easily one of my top 5 I've read in the last 5 years.
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Mar 30, 2017 17:46
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Grimson posted:How many times per week do you estimate you use the word banal? The word's very spirit seems to have infected you. Well yeah, maybe it's not so fair to dismiss the books like that, so here's some fuller thoughts: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – Inheritance of Idiocy N.K. Jemisin posted:“I cannot hope that your mother has taught you duty,” Dekarta said to me over this man’s back. “She abandoned hers to dally with her sweet-tongued savage. I allowed this—an indulgence I have often regretted. So I will assuage that regret by bringing you back into the fold, Granddaughter. Whether you live or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.” Adam Roberts posted:A bourgeois discursive style constructs a bourgeois world. If it is used to describe a medieval world it necessarily mismatches what it describes, creating a milieu that is only an anachronism, a theme park, or a WoW gaming environment rather than an actual place. This degrades the ability of the book properly to evoke its fictional setting, and therefore denies the book the higher heroic possibilities of its imaginative premise. N.K. Jemisin posted:[...] I nodded thanks and studied the Darren shelf. For several minutes I stared at them before realizing that half were poetry, and the other half collections of tales I’d heard all my life. Nothing useful. Which is the worse fantasy series called The Inheritance Trilogy? Is it Christopher Paolini’s dragon nonsense, or N.K. Jemisin’s dull theogony? It turned out a no contest when the combatants prepared to enter the ring. Paolini’s trilogy-in-four-parts does not impress the judges and is disqualified, leaving Jemisin winner by default. But let none say that her victory was unearned or that she wouldn’t have distinguished herself in the fight. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first part of the trilogy. There is no need to read anything after it. In the world of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the local stand-in for Yahweh has subjugated the rest of his pantheon. The monolatric God leased out his servile colleagues to a mortal dynasty, who have since united the world in a confusion of feudal hierarchy, Islamic Caliphate, Catholic theocracy, and ancien regime arrogance. Yeine, Warrior Princess of Darre, would be a black sheep of this family if her race did not make that such an insensitive label. She is called to serve by her grandfather, ruler of the world, and is drawn to the schemes that will decide the fates of both gods and mortals. Thus begins the torturous unfolding of dreary palace intrigues, spiritless romance, and repetitively unimaginative dialogue. The majority of the action is spent on Yeine in a state of dread realization and oppressive frustration, beset by monstrously bullying relatives and the mysteries of her heritage, until the tables are turned in a climactic moment of wish-fulfilling apotheosis. Until the very ending, all joy is practically banished from the text, overwhelmed as it is by monotonous anxiety. quote:“Does ‘Enefadeh’ mean ‘tool,’ then?” I demanded. “Or is it just ‘slave’ in another tongue?” The literary relations of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms are rather obvious: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, Gothic romance, and the squabbling gods of mythology – Greek and Norse spring to mind. Unfortunately, genre fantasy is literature utterly out of touch with its tradition, and fantasy authors time and time again are unable to learn the lessons of classics. Like with so many other scribblers, no one seems to have been around to tell Jemisin that a story is only as fantastical as its language allows it. Thus she has written her story in a banally modern manner, occasionally broken up bits and pieces of fragmentary and portentous narration. quote:I was dangerously close to growing annoyed. “What would you have done to me, then, if not kill me?” The dialogue is perhaps the best indicators of Jemisin’s lack of talent: for a cast of gods and monarchs, the characters of the novel have remarkably little interesting to say. Not one of them possess fire of imagination or vision of poetry. No one in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is poetic or oratorical, odd for a depiction of a pre-modern society that would value eloquence and rhetoric, yet not odd at all in the works of latter-day fantasists. Characters speak (and act) in approximately three tones: proud and bullying, defiant and simmering, or acquiescent and servile – all dependent on their current social position. And Jemisin has a political cartoonist’s sense of subtlety: quote:“This world belongs to the Skyfather. That is indisputable. That man was caught distributing forbidden books, books which denied this reality. And every one of those books’ readers—every good citizen who saw this blasphemy and failed to denounce it—has now joined in his delusion. They are all criminals in our midst, intent on stealing not gold, not even lives, but hearts. Minds. Sanity and peace.” Dekarta sighed. “True justice would be to wipe out that entire nation; cauterize the taint before it spreads. Instead, I’ve merely ordered the deaths of everyone in his faction, and their spouses and children. Only those who are beyond redemption.”¨ quote:“None whatsoever. After this foolishness, I’m tempted to do it just for spite. But I’d rather the Darre survive, now that I think about it. I imagine their lives won’t be pleasant. Slavery rarely is—though we’ll call it something else, of course.” She glanced at Nahadoth, amused. “But they will be alive, Cousin, and where there is life, there is hope. Isn’t that worth something to you? Worth a whole world, perhaps?” Only on occasion does she reach for the potential of fantasy, yet the failings remain obvious. The embarrassing replacement of “Hell” with an appropriate World Building counterpart here is only one such example: quote:[...] It is said that once people made sacrifices of flesh to the Three. They would fill a room with volunteers. Young, old, female, male, poor, wealthy, healthy, infirm; all the variety and richness of humanity. On some occasion that was sacred to all Three—this part has been lost with time—they would call out to their gods and beg them to partake of the feast. The fantasy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is that of a modern liberal, frustrated by their powerlessness in the face of fundamentalism and inequality. That the viewpoint character is also a nobl ereveals the inherent contradiction. A liberal value system is fundamentally opposed to that of the Medieval world, yet Jemisin is too enamoured with the mystery and power of royalty and with New Age dreams – in her mythology, the Mother Goddess has been usurped by the Abrahamic pretender, who in the end is overthrown to restore a more holistic state of things. The oppressive fundamentalists and nobles that serve him are thus also usurpers. It is the lie the fuels fantasies of power and elitism: that masters are not evil because that is the nature of masters, but because we would be better masters. This is Jemisin’s inheritance of idiocy. quote:The knowledge of my power was within me, as instinctive as how to think and how to breathe. I closed my eyes and reached for it, and felt it uncurl and stretch within me, ready. Eager. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Feb 14, 2019 |
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Mar 30, 2017 18:01
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^^^^^^Grimson posted:How many times per week do you estimate you use the word banal? The word's very spirit seems to have infected you. Wow, you weaponized his ability to be boring.
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Mar 30, 2017 18:21
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Captain Monkey posted:^^^^^^ Bravest of the Lamps is some sort of AI, there's no way an actual person can be that tedious yet complex.
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Mar 30, 2017 18:25
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Just got finished reading Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames, and it's a great book. I mean it's not a masterpiece but it's very much like say... Gemmell. It's just a fun read with lots of action that doesn't take itself too seriously while also not being a super simple story or grimdark. The characters all have their own particular problems and conflicts, no teenage angst, and the challenges they face through the story are different/varied enough that it doesn't get tedious as you keep reading. I want more, a lot more. The only two major issues I had were the characters were just flat out overpowered, but not in the John Stu/Mary Sue kind of way, and the ending felt very contrived.
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Mar 30, 2017 21:05
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Yea, they basically just sort of stay on an even keel through the series. It's still hooked me well enough to wonder exactly who the devil is, and what the next miracles were. This was a good shout. Nice, quick fun books. The first few chapters of book 1 didn't click as they were a bit too absurd and occasionally I roll my eyes, but overall a nice light-hearted read that you don't have to think too heavily about. Also obviously Mrs Thomas is the Devil.
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Mar 30, 2017 23:25
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Hundred Thousand Kingdoms could do with a better comparison than mine against our goons' own Traitor Baru Cormorant. Both books are about a young woman inside a despotic empire that rules a good section of the world, trying to bring it down. TTBC makes a point of the massive effort and heartless bureaucracy that goes into making such an empire survive each sucessive day. It is by manipulating the absurdly dystopian systems surrounding her that the protagonist gets poo poo done. By contrast the empire of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms exists because an omnipotent sun god dictates that some nasty blue blood stereotypes (who do nothing all day) are in charge and genocides anyone who disagrees. The hero gets poo poo done because she plays into the century old plans of the hunky night god Edward Cullen :jfc:
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Mar 31, 2017 00:01
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anilEhilated posted:I like Southern Reach a lot, especially Authority. Agree that Ambergris is fantastic, though. Authority is particularly good if you've ever worked in a government office. Definitely resonated with my job in some joyously uncomfortable ways.
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